Friday, December 31, 2010

The God Fire in Our Individual Consciousness

Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the soul. The simplest person, who in his integrity worships God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever the influx of this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased from our god of rhetoric, then may god fire the heart with his presence.

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay, The Over-soul weaves in and out of the mystery of God like a tiger lunging for meal in a galloping herd of prey. The God we worship is indeed the God that we become. There are multitudinous levels of consciousness that thrive in the value climate of our psychological reality. Various beliefs are formed and they are diverse and alien. Beliefs create images that lurk in myths as well as the imagination. People become what they perceive the self to be and wallow in thoughts of a God who abides by traditions and the rhetoric of religions.

Emerson understood that consciousness is like an ocean. As temperatures in different depths change, the color changes as well as the flora and fauna that thrive in their own value climate. We too experiences quality changes as our value climate expresses the distortions and limitations of our outer senses, but our inner senses are not distort. They inhabit our psychological value climate and see through the camouflage of our physical patterns as well as the flow of our distorted patterns and beliefs.

Our camouflage patterns follow the basic rules of our inner universe but reflect them in a distorted and convoluted manner. When we concentrate on and plunge into our inner value climate we dive below our own beliefs and look up and see a foundationless, floating group of beliefs that are enriched with shifting illusions caused by the wind of a non-egotistical will. When this value climate is experienced the most minute to the most gigantic spectrum of knowing becomes the god fire in our individual consciousness.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Deep in the Roots

The mind is ordinarily chock full with all kinds of intellectual nonsense and passional rubbish. They are of course useful in their own was in our daily life. There is no denying that. But it is chiefly because of these accumulations that we are made miserable and groan under the feeling of bondage. Each time we want to make a movement they fetter us, they choke us, and cast a heavy veil over our spiritual horizon. We feel as if we are constantly living under restraint. We long for naturalness and freedom, yet we do not seem to attain them.

Being so long accustomed to the oppression, the mental inertia become hard to remove. In fact it has gone down deep into the roots of our own being, and the whole structure of personality is to be overturned. The process of reconstruction is stained with tears and blood.


D.T. Suzuki in his introduction to Essays in Zen Buddhism is describing what we all believe is vital to a successful physical life. Without intellectual nonsense and passionate rubbish our reality would be a flat line of complacency that has a beginning and an end and both appear at the same point. This necessary group of thoughts and experiences is the catalyst for expansion, but that expansion is manifested in time segments which flow into our probable reality from a pool of consciousness.

We inherently possess pools or separate pockets of experiences where information from the inner self is collected and stored. This information is processed before flowing into our official pool of consciousness where thoughts become experiences. We innately have a selectively significant attribute that creates a reality using innate and learned beliefs to sense our own being, but that being is choked by our self-induced limitations. There are ways to dip into our side pools of consciousness and by pass the selective process and experience other realities physically.

Suzuki calls this pool dipping Zen or seeing into one’s own self nature, but the name is not important unless religious beliefs dominate this process of internal dipping. The pools contain past as well as future probabilities so we can pick up strands of our own consciousness and incorporate them into our physical reality. Explaining this process to the ego consciousness makes this process easier. Expansion does not need tears and blood to physically manifest unless we choose that path.

Deep in the roots of our own being is the natural freedom of expansion and we decide how and when we will experience those roots physically. Just like a tree that chooses to break in half and still grow we choose to break in half in order to grow.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

A Minute Consciousness Capsule

Even to-day science and philosophy are still laboriously trying to part fancies from realities in our experience; and in primitive times they made only the most incipient distinctions in this line. Men believed whatever the thought with any liveliness, and they mixed their dreams with their realities inextricably. The categories of ‘thought’ and ‘things’ are indispensable here; instead of being realities we now call certain experiences only ‘thoughts.’ There is not a category, among those enumerated, of which we may not imagine the use to have thus originated historically and only gradually spread.

William James hits the vacillating nail of reality on the head with those thoughts from his 1906 essay, Pragmatism and Common Sense. The sense of separation rings true in our waking reality, and the union of consciousness is discounted in our dreams. Our boundaries of awareness expand in the dream reality and our inner senses operate freely in a world without physical matter. We travel without moving and see without eyes. The fact that both worlds exist in the same place is lost in a limited belief system which focuses on one aspect of the self.

The dream reality is the foundation for widening conscious comprehension. It is a pulling together or a minute consciousness capsule that enables the self to enter other energy fields. The astral body has been a belief for thousands of years; it is another type of energy capsule.

Thought as we perceive it then is created through the union we have with consciousness. Impulses sent from realities that exist within our world of energy capsules are catalyst for physical experiences as well as dream experiences. History it seems is a fruitless word, but an important word that makes sense of our own creations although all those creations have been experienced in many realties in the past as well as in the future.

There is no category to label dream experiences, but it is realistic to say that they reside in fancies, which are as valid as our self created ego consciousness.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The Wind of the Mind

The Buddha is your own Mind, make no mistake to bow (to external objects). “Buddha” is a Western word, and in this country it means “enlightened nature”; and by “enlightened” is meant “spiritually enlightened.” It is one’s own spiritual Nature in enlightenment that responds to the external world, comes in contact with objects, raises the eyebrows, winks the eyelids, and moves the hands and legs. This Nature in the Mind is the Buddha, and Buddha is the Way, and the Way is Zen.

D.T.Suzuki in his 1926 essay, Satori is explaining Zen and Buddhism in terms we all can understand regardless of our religious beliefs. In fact, his explanation sums up the teachings of all the worshipped sages over the years. The Way is in our own mind or consciousness and when we use it in tandem with our objective focus our world becomes a truly unique place.

The inner validity that is within the self forms the integrity of the physical body as well as the integrity of the social body. The inner self functions for the good of itself as well as the good of society. The individual good is society’s good and that action represents spiritual and physical fulfillment or enlightenment.

The inner universe of the self is the true frontier of discovery and exploring it illuminates the private aspects of reality as well as the experiences of the entire species. The ability to be aware of the unknown reality of Zen as Suzuki describes it is our natural state of being. In the cradle of Zen we meet our religion face to face and discover the unity of consciousness.

The names or labels we use for external worship become immaterial because the experience is not about worship; it is all about oneness within the emptiness of consciousness. That emptiness is filled with the bubbling voice of Zen that has nothing to hold on too, but the self that floats in the wind of the Mind.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Something Unknown is Doing We Don’t Know What

Enlightenment vanquishes Ignorance lying at the root of birth and death and laying fetters of every description, intellectual as well as effective. And this vanquishing of Ignorance cannot be achieved except by the exercise of one’s will power; all the other attempts, especially merely intellectual, are utterly futile.

D.T. Suzuki wrote those thoughts in his 1926 essay, Enlightenment and Ignorance. Ignorance is not lack of knowledge it is a subjective choice that outlines the blueprint of physical life. Within the outline of ignorance is an ever-flowing cycle of awareness that manifests physically in accordance with this innate impulse to connect with what we create physically. Those creations become the contrast needed to fill in the outline.

The blueprint for individual reality is an unknown because we think in terms of consecutive time so we assume that there must be an egg or a seed that produces a reality for consciousness. The seed or egg carries the future of reality in our ignorant state of thought, but the idea of first does not exist in the vast field of knowledge flowing in the stream of consciousness. That stream is not limited; it’s only our beliefs about the stream that create limitations. Inner knowledge is real, valid, and accessible at any moment since an inward reality creates an inward sequence of events that manifest as objective effects.

Scientific “workable” objective facts tend to enhance the ignorance since the facts are framed in certain vibrational frequencies. These facts prejudice thoughts about the nature of consciousness so immediate ego-based thoughts become the perceived blueprint of our consciousness.

That blueprint is just one aspect or effect of consciousness not consciousness itself. It is an intellectual attempt to know the something unknown that is doing we don’t know what, which is the basic element of ignorance. That something is actually consciousness units expressing physical life in an active and awareness producing way. Consciousness units expand the whole stream in the vastness of our inner reality.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Bound By Its Own Limitations

It seems to me that the real problem is the mind itself and not the problem which the mind has created and tries to solve. If the mind is petty, small, narrow, limited, however great and complex the problem may be, the mind approaches that problem in terms of its own pettiness... Though it has extraordinary capacities and is capable of invention, of subtle, cunning thought, the mind is still petty. It may be able to quote Marx or the Gita, or some other religious book, but it is still a small mind, and a small mind confronted with a complex problem can only translate that problem in terms of itself, and therefore the problem, the misery increases. So the question is: Can the mind that is small, petty, be transformed into something which is not bound by its own limitations?

Jiddu Krishnamurti was a 20th century writer and speaker on philosophical and spiritual issues. He constantly stressed the need to reconnect with the inner self and he emphasized that this unity cannot be brought about by any external entity, be it religious, political, or social.

We are taught that we are in our body and our mind is in the brain. We perceive our world through our senses and consider what we perceive to be reality. That reality is coated with beliefs that create the experiences we call life and we rely on external entities to confirm the legitimate aspects of those experiences. The mind develops a playing field filled with rules, regulations, and restrictions and we fence our self in a closed network of judgmental beliefs that hinder out innate freedom to be one in our multiplicity.

A few simple exercises reveal that we are not in our body; the body is within our consciousness and the mind is within our consciousness as well. In fact the world and universe we perceive is in that same consciousness. Everything is in an ever-expanding consciousness. We are an individual drop in that ocean and that drop can change the course of a wave or the ocean. When we become aware of our own self-imposed limitations we free ourselves and a transformation takes place. The separated self bound by controlling perceptions imposed by a mind that creates through others is transformed through inner self-created awareness.

Transformation of self created fragments is an ongoing process and it happens in different ways and in different space-time sequences for each consciousness unit. When limitations dissolve through enlightenment new awareness manifests and eventually what is known in oneness becomes what is known in fragmentation.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Where Strength is Born

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

If any man considers the present aspects of what is called by distinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other.

Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportions to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually.

Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlor soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.


Ralph Waldo Emerson in his 1841 essay, Self-Reliance speaks about responsibility in terms of recognizing the self and its connection with the god stuff we worship in others. The 20th century Indian philosopher and teacher Krishnamurti had the same thoughts:

This is no magnificent deed, because I do not want followers, and I mean this. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth. I am not concerned whether you pay attention to what I say or not. I want to do a certain thing in the world and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

Truth as we see it is only a fragment from a dangling perception of self. We fear this fragment along with all the other fragments that we create from the separation of self within the stream of consciousness. Our universe is a mass shared dream; a dream that presents reality in a certain light. This dream is meaningful as well as creative, but in order to understand it we must go to another level of consciousness where separation blends into the oneness of no space time. It is there within the clear channels of consciousness that we stand outside of this dream and experience the self as god.

Science and society does not comprehend this inner reality until the individual chooses unconsciously to open the gates and allow inner commerce and communication to manifest. This inner meeting place offers answers, solutions, and complete blueprints of every experience of consciousness. It is where strength is born and where we become whole in the ever-flowing stream of god stuff.

Krishnamurti explained that place this way:

And to take such a journey we must travel light; we cannot be burdened with opinions, prejudices and conclusions - all that old furniture ... forget all you know about yourself; forget all you have ever thought about yourself; we are going to start as if we knew nothing.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

Brotherhood of the Cells

He who in pursuit of the shadow tires out the body, does not know that the body produces the shadow; and he who attempts to stop an echo by raising his voice, does not understand that the voice is the cause of the echo.

A disciple of the Zen Master Hui-k’e wrote those thoughts in the sixth century. Chasing shadows and hearing echoes is learned behavior; it seems we spend a great deal of energy doing just that when it comes to our political and religious beliefs. The political shadow is a dualistic form shaped by our limited beliefs about the nature of individual as well as mass identity. The echo we hear is our own voice that comes from within the walls of ignorance. Both try to tell us something about the nature of our consciousness.

There is a private blueprint of consciousness that is greater than our physical materialization that occurs within this space and time. This blueprint provides us with areas of choice that are filled with probabilities and we have the final word on what to choose and what to ignore from that blueprint. Our cells however react to the complete blueprint and an idealization of psychic patterns occurs that fuels growth and development of the cells in terms of physical information. The blueprint is our real shadow that casts light on what we perceive. We use impulses to create physical probabilities that already exist within the blueprint.

The spiritual brotherhood of the cells connects all individuals within a species. The faint echo of biological idealization exists within all of us, but it’s muffled by the lack of appreciation we have for the great individuality of each cell within us. Our cells work so well together we overlook their individual uniqueness until they are affected in some way by our thoughts.

We don’t understand the experiences of our eternal world because we haven’t achieved the spiritual brotherhood that is inherent in each cell. When the body is injured the cells immediately begin a cooperative effort to heal it. When the race is hurt the same biological force is set in motion and a mechanism of consciousness tries to heal it, but our ignorance of our biological cellular brotherhood slows down the process.

One segment of our species can not grow or expand at the expense of other portions for very long, but the eternal shadow and echo chasing does helps create a psychic opening for other aspects of consciousness which reveal solutions once the resistance abates.

As the cells respond at certain levels to an ever-present stream of probabilities our thoughts change. The body responds to those thoughts and the reaction of the cells alters our environment and the brain responds to the alteration. The shadow and the echo are messages that express the experiences we choose in life.